The US presidential election is approaching in November, and the issue of cryptocurrency has become a major focus. Both Biden and Trump have been actively trying to attract voters from the crypto community, making political tokens the center of attention. However, mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges such as Bybit and OKX have expressed their refusal to list political tokens like TRUMP due to their sensitivity.
(Previous summary:
Trump rumored to have launched “Celebrity Meme Coin”! DJT skyrocketed over 500% in a single day, $TRUMP series plummeted after the news.)
(Background supplement:
New York Times article: How does cryptocurrency affect the US presidential election? Has Trump already won?)
The quadrennial US presidential election will be held in November this year, and cryptocurrency voters have become the target of the candidates’ active outreach. Biden and Trump have recently been courting the crypto community, sparking a craze for political finance (PoliFi) meme coins. The most notable one is the PoliFi leader TRUMP, which experienced a surge of over 300% in May.
Although its performance has been relatively lackluster in the past month, TRUMP currently has a market value of $350 million, making it the largest PoliFi token in terms of market capitalization.
The TRUMP team complained about the difficulties of listing TRUMP on mainstream exchanges. Initially, TRUMP was mainly traded on decentralized exchanges and gradually made its way to non-mainstream decentralized exchanges, including MEXC, LBank, BingX, and BitMart. However, according to CoinDesk, the TRUMP team complained that it was difficult to list TRUMP on mainstream exchanges.
Steven Steele, the marketing director of TRUMP, revealed that after applying to list TRUMP on Kraken, the oldest exchange in the United States, in mid-May, they have not received a response to this day. He expressed his dissatisfaction, stating that these exchanges, out of political reasons, refused to list TRUMP, showing an embarrassing level of cowardice and disregarding the current meme coin trend and their own customers, which is unbelievable.
While Kraken obviously refused to list TRUMP, its competitor TREMP recently listed on Kraken and also listed on HTX and other lesser-known exchanges. Kraken also plans to list the Biden-themed meme coin BODEN.
Is the strong political nature the main reason for rejection?
Other exchanges told the TRUMP team that the token was “too politically charged” to be listed, even though these exchanges initially stated that it could be listed as long as it met certain trading volume targets before listing.
The listing team representative of ByBit initially provided the TRUMP team with trading volume targets as a prerequisite for listing on the exchange. However, the representative later stated that ByBit’s management refused to list it because it could potentially bring political risks to the centralized exchange.
OKX also gave a similar response to the TRUMP team. A member of OKX’s listing team stated that political meme coins are too sensitive to be listed.
The TRUMP team has not yet applied for listing on HTX, which is the only mainstream exchange that has listed TREMP besides Kraken. An HTX spokesperson stated that they do not rule out listing TRUMP and will consider potential projects and tokens for listing on their platform based on market conditions and trends.
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